๐ฌ ๐๐๐๐'๐ฆ ๐ช๐๐๐ง ๐ฌ๐ข๐จ ๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ง๐ต https://bit.ly/3r1yPW6 ๐ต
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| Photo credit: unknown, screenshots from the video, edit by Sรญlke |
The video concept by Brian was loosely based around the original 1986 Talk Talk clip in which frontman Mark Hollis and company are surrounded by nature and “little beasties crawling over leaves”. What he had in mind was an updated version wherein “Placebo would be robots playing instruments and that e-waste would replace nature, as it appears to be doing only a few decades after the song’s original release”.
Brian said about Sasha that he "called her up to sound her out and discovered that I was speaking to a very brave and passionate woman“. He added that he told her she had balls of steel for actually daring to go film on this location in Ghana and that "no, we would not be coming, since we were timid little souls."
In another interview with NME Brian stated that “Life's what you make it” and also the single “Jesus' son”, are “possibly two of the most commercial tracks that we've ever done. We have a tendency to react allergically against what we’ve just done, so it's highly likely that the next thing we do will be something akin to career suicide.”
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| Photo credit: The Vibe Asia |
๐ ๐ฆ๐ง๐๐๐๐ก ๐ข๐ก “๐๐๐๐'๐ฆ ๐ช๐๐๐ง ๐ฌ๐ข๐จ ๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ง“ ๐
๐ข “Life’s what you make it” is kind of a slogan to wake up to each day, you know? Sometimes I wake up with panic attacks and I just have to tell myself that this will pass and that there are a lot of good things to live for. There are a lot of things that I appreciate and I am thankful for everything that I have.“
(Fourculture, October 3rd 2016)
๐ ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐ก ๐ข๐ก ๐ง๐๐ ๐ฉ๐๐๐๐ข ๐
๐ข “I think it's important to point out that the official video of “Life's what you make it“ is not against technology. It would be ridiculous, we know how it enriches our lives.[…] However, we hope this video will make people think about the repercussions that this entails when one simply throws away the technological equipment which no longer works.There are new ingenious ways to recycle them today.“
(The Independent, 2016)
๐ข “The video is not anti-technology. It is about the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity that has not been chosen.”
(Gigwise, June 15th 2017)
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| Photo credit: Maud Maillard |
๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ฆ๐๐ ๐ฅ๐๐๐ก๐๐ข๐ช ๐ข๐ก ๐ง๐๐ ๐ฉ๐๐๐๐ข ๐
๐ข “I hoped to capture the environment in a dreamily meditative way that would at once juxtapose and yet synergise with the theme of the song and glimpse at a part of the repercussions of our current technological revolution. Technology on the one hand is enabling us to create things beyond our wildest imagination, and yet little discussion has been had about what to do with all our discarded e-waste."
(Gigwise, June 15th 2017)
๐ข ”I loved the Talk Talk version of the song, so I went back to the original music video and took it as a starting point. As music video directors, we store up lots of visual and art references. I remember seeing these journalistic photos of Abogbloshie and I thought well, our subject’s e-waste and the song’s called ‘Life’s what you make it’. I don’t think we could have anything more clear than actually going to one of these places and filming there. It seemed very obvious to me.”
(uDiscover Music, 2016)
๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ฆ๐๐ ๐ฅ๐๐๐ก๐๐ข๐ช – ๐๐๐ฆ๐๐ ๐๐ก๐๐ข ๐
Sasha Rainbow is an award winning director who has worked across multiple disciplines including film, art direction, photography and costume. She started her first documentary “Kofi and Lartey“, which is set on the e-waste dump Agbogbloshie, after the „Life is what you make it“ video was recorded. Placebo are executive producers of the film. Sasha's other short documentary “Kamali“ is about a seven year old Indian girl who is breaking gender stereotypes through skateboarding. It was longlisted for an Oscar and nominated for British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards (BAFTA). Her Wild Beasts “Alpha Female“ music video features women skateboarding in India and was shared by Tony Hawk. An interview about it with BBC World Service went viral with over 600,000 people watching it within a week. Her work for Toyota was the largest campaign in South East Asia in 2018. Sasha believes that storytelling “can throw light onto underrepresented communities to showcase heroic role models, which is just what the world needs“.
Post by Silke
